Weekend delay in initiation of chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia: does it matter?

The Friday afternoon admission of a child with a potential diagnosis of leukemia creates perceived delays in treatment initiation. Although generally not felt to affect prognosis, the effect of a few days delay in chemotherapy for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has not been fully investigated. We retrospectively analyzed 207 patients consecutively diagnosed with ALL at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland from 1995 to 2007 to determine if delay in chemotherapy increased the risk of relapse, death, transfer to the intensive care unit, or bacteremia.

Agreement among HLA antibody detection assays is higher in ever-pregnant donors and improved using a consensus cutoff.

Background: HLA antibodies might contribute to the pathogenesis of transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI). HLA antibody detection methods include ELISA, flow cytometry, and multiplex bead-based assays, as well as the older lymphocytotoxicity assay, and it is not obvious how to compare results across platforms.

Study Design And Methods: Five hundred twenty-five serum samples were selected from 7841 donors in the Leukocyte Antibody Prevalence Study (LAPS) repository based on risk for the development of HLA antibodies, using the number of pregnancies as the risk factor.